Comment by paulcole | Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulcole | Hacker News Reader

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> Mountain lions can pose a real threat to small children, so literally, pick up your kids with you if you see a mountain close by.

While not awful advice, it's also vastly overblowing the true (nonexistent) danger mountain lions pose.

Mountain lions are one of the smallest threats imaginable to anyone, small children included. 99.99% of people will never ever ever even be fortunate enough to see a mountain lion in the wild.

If you do see a mountain lion up close, it's because either you surprised it (extremely unlikely) or because it wants you to see it (slightly less likely). If you and a kid are being hunted by a mountain lion (unbelievably unlikely) you'll likely never see it until it's too late.

Do not let anyone ever tell you that mountain lions pose any kind of real threat to humans. Mountain lions are responsible for ones of attacks on humans over a period of years, if not decades. It'd be like saying to watch out for the threat of getting hit by lightning while winning the lottery.

Mountain Lions are like Sharks of the land. What I mean by that is that their danger is wildly overblown in movies and news.

Statistically speaking, attacks from both animals are insanely rare.

For example, there have only been 25 deaths from Mountain Lions in North America since we began recording these in the 1800s.

By comparison, fatal shark attacks are over 6 times more likely to occur with about 1 shark attack in North America per year on average.

So it is interesting that whenever we go hiking in the woods or see a mountain lion cross the street, the news reports it and everyone loses their minds. Dying to a mountain lion is one of the rarest ways to die from a statistical perspective. There are rare diseases that you have never heard of that are more likely to kill you.

Every time we put our toe in the water people fear shark attacks. A rogue swell is more likely to capsize your boat than for you to be attacked by a shark, yet some people live in fear of it.

Also if you have hiked any considerable amount in the Rocky Mountains or Sierra Nevada mountain ranges than you have almost certainly had a Mountain Lion watch you, probably several times. Despite the fact, you have never seen it.

Bears are another one. I have encountered so many bears in the wild that I seriously don't even have a count for it anymore. I have stumbled on them less than 100 feet away from me on several occasions and guess what happens... they look me square in the eyes and then calmly turn around and walk away. Sometimes they run away, but they have no interest in killing me. I have never had one approach me once we became aware of the presence of each other.

I hike and camp A LOT, and I have NEVER seen a mountain lion in the wild, despite living in areas of their prime habitat where we know they live. I have seen virtually every other native large animal species on multiple occasions. But I have never seen a mountain lion in the wild. But I can guarantee you that they have seen me several times. That is what is scary about mountain lions. If you ever did get attacked, it would be over before you knew what was happening.

I have seen mountain lions cross the road twice in Park City, UT now. I have seen them in zoos as well. But just never seen one in the wild. Despite spending enough time to encounter bears on 20+ occasions.

Not a bad comparison, but you're overlooking one big difference: There are many more sharks than there are mountain lions.

If you're swimming at any beach in Florida (for example) you are likely to be within 20' of a shark at all times. At some points in the year you will be near dozens if not hundreds of sharks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyHUr-2_Ets

I have flown in a Cessna low over very popular beaches and there are so many sharks visible that it gets boring to count them.

I live in CA near Santa Cruz and we have had mountain lions in our backyard.

I've seen them close up and was not scared for the reasons you mentioned, it wanted to be seen. I had a slightly scarier incident where I was hissed at from thick bushes by a mountain lion that I couldn't see, but I left and the lion did not follow.

It's extremely common in our area for lions to attack and kill small dogs and livestock. For that reason, there aren't many people that appreciate preserving these animals even though there have been no recorded attacks on humans in our area.

Bears used to be common in the area too, but were hunted to extinction hundreds of years ago and the ecosystem adapted and survived.

If lions weren't here there are lots of people who would definitely hunt to keep the population down.

I think people overestimate the danger of lions to people, but also overestimate the environmental impact if they left.

But overall I know many people who have seen lions up close or been followed while hiking and everyone ended up being safe.

Yeah, I've seen one while trail running in Oregon. While scary (came around a blind turn before sunrise and it was about 20' away), it clearly wanted nothing to do with me. Just stopped, looked at me, and wandered off the trail. One of the most memorable wildlife encounters I've had in my life.

>Bears used to be common in the area too, but were hunted to extinction hundreds of years ago and the ecosystem adapted and survived.

I think we have different definitions of survived... The bears certain didn't, and that to me is an extraordinarily terrible environmental impact.

By survived, I mean the ecosystem as a whole rebalanced and survived.

I think there's this notion of taking any predator or apex animal out of an ecosystem can cause it to collapse. But early humans hunted many animals to extinctions, at least regionally, and those ecosystems may have changed, but I don't know of any that became inhospitable or void of life as a result.

I'm sure there was some environmental impact of hunting bears to extinction in Central CA, I'm just not aware of it and haven't heard of anyone proposing that we reintroduce them.

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